GOP reconsiders Obamacare tactics

The stiffest test facing congressional GOP leaders is how to avoid another Obamacare-induced fiscal crisis, which top Republicans say would put their House majority in jeopardy and further deplete the party’s uphill chances of capturing control of the Senate.

Two different tactics are on display: In the House, the approach is to be meek; in the Senate, it’s to be muscular.

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whose grip on most Senate Republicans is strong, isn’t mincing words: He says the defund Obamacare movement that led to a government shutdown and near default on U.S. debt was a “tactical error” and “not a smart play.” The Senate Republican leader’s hard line leaves no doubt about his preference: Republicans should drop this fruitless fight and instead focus on keeping overall government spending levels low.

But McConnell’s bluster is tempered by House Speaker John Boehner. Given the unruly dozens in his House Republican Conference, Boehner has to let the specter of another shutdown and deficit crisis linger. But the Ohio Republican is beginning to shift his rhetorical focus toward oversight of the Obama administration. He privately hopes Obamacare begins to collapse under its own weight, and the majority of House Republicans organically come toward his view that a second fiscal crisis is fruitless, aides say.

Despite the seeming space, McConnell and Boehner share the same private outlook: Obamacare is a loser, but so are strategies to defund it with Democrats in control of the Senate and the White House.

McConnnell and Boehner are two very different men facing very different political circumstances, which helps explain their tactical differences. McConnell is up for reelection in 2014, a fight in which his Democratic opponent is shaping up as his principal political obstacle. Boehner must tack to the right, as he balances his responsibility to govern while trying to maintain his grip on the speakership. There are, perhaps, more than a dozen House Republicans who think the party reopened government and lifted the debt ceiling too early.

Government funding will expire on Jan. 15, and McConnell is beginning to define victory for Republicans as maintaining spending caps established in the 2011 Budget Control Act. That would leave 2014 government spending — except for entitlements — at $967 billion.

“To me, protecting current law when you only have a small foothold in the government, is the most honest way we’re probably going to be able to achieve” GOP goals, McConnell told POLITICO in an interview.

Asked whether he thinks Republicans should attach anti-Obamacare language to the next government funding bill, McConnell demurred.

“It’s going to take Democrats to do that,” McConnell said. “I think one thing people who were not persuaded [that the tactic failed] learned is that Democrats are pretty hard-over in support of Obamacare.”

Since the 16-day shutdown fight, Boehner is beginning to focus on oversight — using the tools afforded to the majority to expose what he considers the Obama administration’s missteps. On Wednesday, Boehner said “the biggest part of Congress’s job is to provide proper oversight of the executive branch of government.” If he dubbed that government’s principal responsibility a few weeks ago, it would’ve caused widespread outcry.

“We went through a very tough period,” Boehner said, when asked about McConnell’s comments. “As I told my colleagues the other day, we fought the fight, we didn’t win, we live to fight another day. The fact is, we’re going to have issues about funding the government come Jan. 15. We’re gonna have the debt ceiling we’re going to have to deal with again, the looming problems that are affecting our country are still there. We’re spending more than what we bring in to the tune of $700 billion this year alone, even though we have record income.”

The next test for Congress will be to see whether the two parties can reach a deal by mid-December on a large-scale budget agreement. The same issues that have divided the parties for years — taxes and entitlement cuts — make prospects for a compromise extraordinarily slim. Several elements could push Congress toward a deal — most notably, GOP hawks, who want to avoid steep cuts to defense spending in 2014. Failing to reach a mid-December deal would put the focus back on the Jan. 15 deadline to avoid a government shutdown.